In the Beginning...

"The Drunkenness of Noah," Michelangelo,The Sistine Chapel
See Genesis 9:20-21, the part that comes after the rainbow

The lectionary is an organized liturgical plan for reading the Bible in public worship. The Episcopal Church and many others use what is called The Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday worship over a three-year cycle.

I have a love-hate relationship with the people who make these choices. I don't know if there is really such a thing as "the Lectionary Committee" but I speak of them that way in a kind of short-hand. Sometimes they skip over the challenging, but often most  interesting readings. I once taught an interfaith study for Christians and Jews with a rabbi friend that we called "Fifty Shades of Genesis" to rectify this problem. I do get it that many of the R-rated texts we covered are for mature audiences only and perhaps not appropriate for public worship. It makes sense that in chapter nine, for example, we stop with the rainbow promise from God and don't continue on to a naked, passed out drunk Noah. Even so, we had a lot of fun looking more deeply into those texts that make us blush.

But even more than where a text begins and ends and what gets cut, my deeper frustration is with the way that Old Testament texts were chosen in older lectionaries before the RCL,including the one that is printed in The Book of Common Prayer. That's because they got chosen (skewed?) toward the Gospel reading for the day. So let's say that Jesus quotes Isaiah in the gospel reading. How cool to make Isaiah the reading for the day, some member of the "Lectionary Committee" says. Yeah, we'll go with that. Next week Jesus is quoting from Jeremiah. Same conversation. Same result.

As I see it, this way of making the Old Testament the "set up man" for Jesus reinforces a heresy the early Church called Marcionism. Consistently choosing Old Testament readings to shed light on the Gospel reading makes it seem as if every word of the Old Testament is a straight line to Jesus.  As if the prophets have no historical context of their own. As if God's chosen people aren't still reading these texts. In this way of organizing a lectionary, the Old Testament readings aren't allowed their own voices. Or, at the very least, those voices are muted.

Now I love Jesus, don't get me wrong. But he was formed and shaped and nourished by Torah and the Prophets. So it seems to me that those who would be his followers ought to spend some time with those texts, in their own right. It turns out there is another way to organize the Old Testament readings. (Actually, probably many other ways!) But most simply, rather than bouncing around week after week, one could choose to read the Old Testament the same way we tend to read Paul's Letters: sequentially. Sticking with one book at a time... 

Now this is all very much insider baseball, I know. Most people show up at church (when we can show up at church) and have not given much thought to who chose the readings for the day, and how they did it. At some point the people who organized the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) decided that in the summer they'd offer something called Track 1 and Track 2. Track 1 would allow the Old Testament to stand on it's own. So, to be very specific (and the real reason for this post which is more than a rant) is this: beginning on Trinity Sunday and through the middle of August, Track 1 will have us reading from The Book of Genesis. All of it? No. There is way too much. And certainly not those R-rated texts that Rabbi Fellman and I used for "Fifty Shades" - you'll have to go looking for those on your own.

Even so: we are invited to go back and reflect on the first book of the Bible for eleven straight weeks. Now who on earth would choose instead to bounce all over the place on Track 2? It's there to avoid a fight, I think, with those who have "always read the Old Testament this way." But I think we should "let it go..."

I have already blogged about the Trinity for this coming Sunday with just a passing reference to Genesis 1. But over the course of the next ten weeks, this blog will be given over to specifically focusing in on those readings from the Track 1 readings from the Book of Genesis. It will be a kind of "Bible Study" for the summer months (whether one is a preacher or not) and whether or not one goes to a church that uses Track 1. It's an invitation, I hope to use some lectio divina, by entering more deeply into the first book of the Torah, the Scriptures that Jesus of Nazareth read, marked, learned and inwardly digested. I hope that in addition to lectio, we can follow Karl Barth's advice and pay attention to the Word of God on the one hand and the world in which we are living (that seems to be coming apart) to see where there might be places of intersection.

One of the things this pandemic has given me greater clarity about is that this is a time to return to basics. Two things that give me hope are a return to daily prayer, especially but not exclusively by praying The Daily Office, i.e. Morning Prayer, Noon Day Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline. And secondly, to a deeper engagement with Holy Scripture, which is the place where God's Story and our stories intersect. We (especially those who occupy a place of privilege in our society) are finding that dislocation is opening up the Word to us in new and powerful ways. That Word is not limited to the four gospels. We are called to be a people who do not use the Bible as a prop, but open it up to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it.

So let's go back to the very beginning....a very good place to start. The text appointed for the Second Sunday after Pentecost will be from Genesis 18, with an option to add some verses from Genesis 21. On Monday, June 8, I'll offer a post on this text which will be read for common prayer on Sunday, June 14. At least for those fortunate enough to be on Track 1.